Google Inc. (GOOG) Acquires Sparrow for “new Gmail Project”

Google Inc. (GOOG) has gone ahead to acquired yet another company to wind into its web of online companies and lab tests. The search giants latest acquisition is popular Mac OS X and iOS email client, Sparrow. Sparrow was introduced in February of 2011, and brought a simplified email application to users, looking for a simple, yet powerful application to handle rich HTML emails. Sparrow currently offers a number of features such as Gmail support as well as other iMAP email services.

The app also has, Dropbox support for uploading attachments, drag and drop attachments and even Growl support. Google’s Gmail labels are also already part of the application and will likely take on many more features from the the search giant’s massive cache of acquired companies and services. Google currently has over 43.1 billion dollars in cash to spend on acquisitions and is likely doing this to improve Gmail.

According to a Google spokeswoman, the company is reportedly acquiring Sparrow for a “new Gmail project” but will not disturb the team or app and will keep it running as usual. Google currently does not offer a desktop application on PC or Mac, and has a very simple web based application for Gmail on iOS. With the acquisition of Sparrow, Google would be bringing a team of developers who have developed for both the Mac OS X and iOS platforms, and know how to create a solid application.

At this point, it is unclear exactly what Google plans to do with Sparrow, however, with the company being a massive search giant, and controlling one of the biggest email clients in the world, acquiring Sparrow is a very smart move. In a report from CNN Money, Sparrow CEO commented, saying the following:

Now we’re joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google.

Google has acquired other companies in the past, such as Aardvark, and decided to incorporate the company into Google+ and then shut down the company. It is very likely that Sparrow may also be eliminated after Sparrow is thoroughly integrated into Google’s Gmail.